Social Cinema Marketing: Why It's Important to Your Business

Industries

Tools

Social media has been exploding in a big way for marketers in every industry and every country. Cinema marketing in particular has seen some innovative, impressive advertising. To understand what I mean, we need look no further than Guardians of the Galaxy or The Amazing Spider-man 2.

The latter started putting out stories by The Daily Bugle, a newspaper whose cataloging of Spider-man's feats is well know within the comic on Tumblr, a popular site for sharing viral images and stories. The former move promoters did a number of things. Notable, however, was the introductory profiling of the main characters, and a marketing move on the music streaming site Grooveshark. The promoters built playlists representing each character for people to listen to, accompanied by the trailer and a countdown to the movie release. Paranormal Activity used social marketing to explode into a highly profitable film. Theaters can learn a lot here, as the movies they show are vital to the income they make.

There are a number of other examples of movies and film houses that have done a lot of social media marketing of late, but the point is this. Social media is a growing option for film houses to start recouping the money lost as people moved away from the theater in favor of downloading or buying the movies and shows. People are more likely to make the time to see something in theaters if they are engaged previously through viral marketing. Another social tactic that has been used in recent history is gamification. The Hunger Games, a popular young adult series of books, put out a social networking game on Facebook leading up to the release of the first movie. The movie was rewarded with very high engagement on Facebook for their efforts.

It's not hard to see that social media is bringing people back to the theater to see the movie they have been immersed in through clever cinema marketing. These are all large-scale examples. However, another example is the Halifax move Hobo With a Shotgun. A trailer directed by Jason Eisener, a native Haligonian who entered into a contest by Quentin Tarantino. That trailer went on to become a movie starring Rutger Hauer among other big-stage names, in part due to social media demand and marketing. The movie went on to appear on OnDemand services such as Xbox Live and other large networks of OnDemand content. This is a perfect example of the power of social media, and something that film houses have taken note of. Marketing the theater is just as important as marketing the movies themselves. The location has to have a good reputation, or at least add to the buzz around the movies they're showing.

For more information on our marketing automation capabilities, which can be used to automate social media posting as well as much more, check out our marketing automation page. Have a look at our movie theater page as well, to see more. The infographic used to get some of this information such as The Hunger Games and Paranormal Activity can be found here.

Questions about how to improve your social cinema marketing?

Be sure to let us know if you have any questions about how you can use the SimplyCast platform to bolster your cinema marketing strategy. Contact us today and we will be happy to help you out!